Starting from scratch: The birth of a small business

About 98 percent of local companies are small businesses - and nearly 60 percent of U.S. startups fail within the first four years. The Star followed a new business through its first year to chronicle the ups and downs of getting started.

That business, Chantilly Tea Room and Gift Boutique, marks its first birthday this week. A four-part series on the journey starts today and continues Monday through Wednesday in the Business section.

Tamara Read dreams of Victorian homes, fine linens and proper tea ceremonies.

She was born in a city of adobe bungalows, serapes and tequila-laced drinks.

Read is building a tea room in Tucson.

It's going to require a few compromises.

*****

Like many small-business owners, Read, 33, worked for other people before getting up the nerve to start her own company.

Her employers included a pastry shop, the Southern Arizona Chapter of the American Red Cross, and most recently an assisted-living facility.

But she's dreamed for so long of owning a business - specifically, a tea room - that she had to do it.

The soft-spoken, petite brunette is smitten with the genteel side of Victorian living. She loves to cook and has taken courses in flower arranging and cake decorating.

Both her parents have owned businesses - her mom used to run a retail shop and her dad is a business consultant.

"Everything in my life," she says, "has been leaning toward this venture."

Read is betting hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of work that she'll succeed.

If she doesn't play it right, lots of people could suffer, including employees, loyal customers and vendors. She could become another sad statistic - just like the 25 percent of restaurateurs who, according to a recent Ohio State University study, don't make it to see their first anniversary.

Tough odds, but she's willing to take them.

"It's just part of who I am," she says. "I remember sitting in California with a friend at the table, and I said, ‘All I really want to do is open a tea room.' I think it's just supposed to be."

Roadblocks and red tape

Read has loved tea rooms since she had tea at New York City's Plaza hotel when she was 10 or 11.

"You walk in and it's got marble everywhere and fresh flowers, and pillars and things on the ceilings," she says. "You're served very elegantly. There's something very gracious about them and very soothing to the soul and very refined."

Since then, she has visited tea rooms all over the world, including England and Venice. She ticked off their amenities on a checklist she drew up, planning to implement some of them when she someday opened a tea room of her own.

Her road didn't lead straight to her dream. First, the Tucson native graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in English philosophy and classics, and later a master's degree in education. She taught for only a few months, ending up working for the Red Cross and later the assisted-living home.

For years, she has been saving money and scouring antique shops for furniture and delicate, porcelain teacups to dress her future tea room.

"You start thinking ahead," she says. "You save and you do stuff."

Her original vision was to buy and refurbish an old home, but those she found suitable were Downtown - which she loves, but which other people don't, she says. People complain there's no parking, and street people don't lend an air of refinement.

Then, six years ago, she bought a bit of land on busy North Oracle Road, just north of River Road. Her real estate agent called the property a "sleeper" that had somehow escaped notice. As soon as she bought it, she began receiving offers from people who wanted to buy it. She turned them all down, and spent the next four years wound in red tape trying to get the land rezoned by Pima County.

"Although we worked with some good people," she says now, "it was a very frustrating process."

In the end, the delay worked in her favor: She had intended to open the business in September 2001, when terrorists attacked the United States and the economy took a sharp downturn.

"Given the situation in our country, that might not have been the best time to open a business," she says.

To prepare to run a tea room, she took business courses and cooking classes and volunteered at least one day a month for four years at a Mesa-area tea room called Abbey Gardens. Owner Hallie Adams was happy to indulge Read's curiosity about the inner workings of a business where little details and personal interaction mean everything.

"It's very important when you have repeat customers, as we do, that they see the same familiar faces and that the servers get to know them," Adams says. "People love to be called by their first name. They love to be recognized."

Market research be damned

Most businesses fail because they don't have enough money to get through the slow early days - or months, or even years.

Read got a loan of more than $600,000 through Commercial Federal Bank and Business Development Finance Corp. She also invested thousands of dollars of her own savings.

"We spent a year doing loan stuff. My dad played a big part in that," she says.

But the loan is in Read's name alone.

"So if it flops," she says, "it's all me."

It is early March 2002, and construction on Read's business will start soon. Already she has learned about financing, real estate, budgeting, building and architecture. She also learned it would be as expensive to rent as it would be to build. But before she launches her business, she needs to bone up on human resources issues, and site details such as landscaping, water and garbage.

"Even where the mailbox is supposed to go is a huge issue," she says.

It's scary, but she's ready to take the risk, fail at certain tasks, and hopefully do them right the next time.

"I'm going to flub," she says. "I know I am."

The business fronts an exclusive neighborhood, but, luckily, the homeowners embraced the idea of a tea room for a number of reasons: It will look like a house, it will close early and it won't have bright lights, blaring music or noisy delivery trucks.

The property is challenging in many ways. It's small and wedge-shaped, and it butts against a wall of desert. The building itself has interesting but tough design elements, including a round tower and angled rather than straight lines.

"The architect learned new words," Read says. "I kept saying, ‘I want it charming.' He said, ‘What?' "

What she did not do - and what almost every business consultant would suggest - is conduct formal market research to figure out if Tucson will support such a venture.

Doesn't matter, Read says. No matter what, "I'm going to do it anyway."

"It's finally happening"

Just a few weeks later, on March 28, 2002, Read's pre-construction optimism has dimmed. Workers have poured the slab for the tea room, and she's disappointed.

"Doesn't it look tiny to you?" she asks, surveying the 3,000 square feet of wet concrete. "I keep thinking I'm not going to be able to fit everything I need in there."

"Nah, it's big," says builder Tom Alfonso, owner of Linear Construction.

A moment later, Read brightens.

"It's going to be great," she says. "We're actually going to have a building. I'm actually going to have to do this. Oh my Lord."

Workers were at the site at 4:30 a.m. to pour the concrete and now, five hours later, they're on their knees smoothing it with flat, rectangular trowels. It's a cloudy, breezy day, and Alfonso hopes for rain, because it helps control dust.

"I'm awed a little bit because it's finally happening," Read says.

Cars driving down Genematas Road, off of Oracle, slow to peer at the workers. Read announced her project in a neighborhood association publication, but lots of people still stop to ask what's going on.

"It'll work," Alfonso tells Read. "I know a lot of people are excited about it. The neighbors are."

But nearby residents aren't the only people who've noticed the project. A few weeks after construction begins, would-be thieves break into the fenced construction site, hoist a heavy cast-iron post that supports the porch roof and try to heave it over the chain-link fence.

They don't succeed, and the construction crew concretes the post into the ground. But later someone bends the post trying to dislodge it from the concrete. Construction supplies - most recently, 50 sheets of plywood - disappear overnight over a series of weeks.

"I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, you're kidding,' " Read says. "‘You've got lights all over the building.'"

Builder Alfonso requests that police increase patrols, and Read asks neighbors to be on alert, but she is worried.

Insurance covers the property losses - damage adds up to about $3,000 - but not the loss of Read's peace of mind.

"It's the invasion of your privacy," Read says. "I didn't think they'd come and dig things out of the concrete."

By mid-June, the thefts have stopped. The walls of the building are up, and workers are stuccoing them. The building process is accelerating.

"I'm getting a little freaked," Read says. "After four years of doing this it suddenly seems like it's going too fast."

Meanwhile, there's lots to do - hire a staff, choose colors, and repaint light fixtures that, it turns out, don't match the color scheme. Read needs at least one cook, an assistant cook, a part-time server, a full-time server and a retail clerk.

If she's lucky, she'll be able to afford to hire a dishwasher by Christmas.

The owner

Name: Tamara Read

Age: 33

Birthplace: Tucson

Business: Chantilly Tea Room and Gift Boutique, 5185 N. Genematas Drive, 622-3303

Path to failure

Top 10 reasons small businesses fail:

10. Lack of fundamental business skills

9. Complacency

8. No support team

7. Wrong location

6. Refusal to delegate

5. Poor hiring and management

4. Insufficient marketing strategies

3. Poor understanding of customers

2. No written business plan

1. Not enough money

SOURCE: Arizona Daily Star research

Day two of a four-day series

Vandals hit the Chantilly Tea Room and Gift Boutique, under construction off North Oracle Road, and kitchen equipment fails. Still, the staff holds a successful pre-opening tea.

*****

It's been three months since builders poured the slab for the new Chantilly Tea Room and Gift Boutique, and the 3,000-square-foot structure is nearing completion.

The specially built windows are installed, the inside is primered a soft eggshell color, and workers are leveling the land off North Oracle Road where the parking lot and driveway will sit.

And, ah, the details: rounded corners. A curved stairway. Ceiling medallions that surround the chandeliers. Next up: installation of light fixtures, the final coats of paint, concrete coloring, landscaping and riprapping, installation of wood flooring and carpeting.

Now that it is becoming a reality, owner Tamara Read has big decisions to make - many of them at the last minute.

Read is opening a small business - something about 98 percent of all Tucson firms are - and is determined to be among the 46 percent of U.S. companies that survive four years. Just 2 1/2 months before the scheduled opening date, she decides to change the name of the enterprise.

Its original name, "Vintage Expressions," is too bulky, too much of a tongue-twister. So she'll use that as the company's legal name and call her business Chantilly Tea Room and Gift Boutique.

"I'd seen this name months and months ago on a road sign and I thought, ‘That would be such a great name for a tearoom,' " Read says.

One drawback: She has spent the last week calling vendors - there are close to 100 of them - to notify them of the name change.

She also had to delay deliveries a couple of weeks because although the building is still on schedule, it's pushing up against the drop-dead deadline.

Vendors will be delivering frames, lamps, pillows, china, silver, silk flowers and gift boxes, bags and baskets. The inventory will arrive just after the first week in August and keep coming all that month.

It's finally reality.

But reality isn't always pretty.

Read learns that one Saturday morning while driving past the construction site, 5185 N. Genematas Drive, with her dad on the way to Home Depot.

"Dad, there's something wrong with the windows," she tells her father, Bruce Read.

There is nothing amiss, he assures her - it is just glare from the early morning sun. Read insists they stop, and they discover someone has broken several windows and shattered every pane on a custom-made, multipaned French door.

It's Aug. 24, 2002 - almost a month to the day before the tearoom's scheduled opening date.

Glass shards are scattered throughout the building, and when people walk on them they make tiny indentations in the formerly pristine wood laminate flooring. Large and small bits of glass are sprinkled all over the antique furniture.

It could have been worse though, a shaken Read says.

"I don't know what scared them off. They could have hit every single window," she says.

The breakage attracts the attention of neighbors, who drive by slowly and even back up to look at the damage.

The tearoom's builder, Tom Alfonso, arrives with his teen-age son.

"Bad karma, huh?" he jokes.

"You were the first call I made," Read tells him.

"You got to start getting out of that habit," he says. They both know: She should have called the police first.

While theft at job sites is common - and is something this project already has experienced - Alfonso says he's never had a project vandalized in 22 years of working in Tucson. A laser security system had been scheduled to be installed weeks earlier. But that had to wait until phone lines were connected, which happened to be the day before the vandalism - and a month behind schedule. When he arrives to install the system, Michael Epperson of Epperson Security Professionals surveys the damage sadly.

"How loud can you make it?" Read asks him.

"One hundred and ten decibels is the most they can do," he tells her. "You'll be able to hear it all the way to River."

Last-minute glitches

The broken windows are all custom-made and must be reordered. To Read's relief, they are replaced just days before the grand opening. But the hot water dispenser, a pricey "extra" Read ordered so she wouldn't have to worry about heating water for the tearoom's staple - tea - is on the fritz.

And the industrial-size refrigerator's temperature regulator isn't working properly, spoiling several hundred dollars' worth of food.

These are two of the biggest glitches Read faces just days before the grand opening, when 72 members of the Red Hat Society - a group of older women who wear purple outfits topped with red hats - are set to descend on the tearoom.

Three days before the grand opening, Read's staff assembles for a "training tea," a dry run to which they've invited family and friends.

Read, dressed down in a green T-shirt, black slacks and white Keds, sits down with chef consultant James Botwright, who explains how she should order food from vendors using numerical codes. Appearing a bit dazed, she heads upstairs to her office to put in the order.

The tables are set with fresh flowers, intentionally mismatched silver and fragile teacups. There's nonstop activity, with workers sweeping the floor, folding napkins and making sure no detail is overlooked. In the midst of it all an addled Read stands in a doorway, her hands over her eyes, and asks herself, "What was I going to do?"

"What tea should we try?" Read asks the kitchen.

Dishwasher Priscilla Sprague suggests ginger peach.

Read uncaps it and takes a whiff.

"Umm. Fruity. Musky. We'll give it a whirl," she says. Suddenly, she's in her element.

The kitchen shifts into high gear. Tearoom assistant Ann Marie DeBenedetti fills three-part serving dishes with preserves and Devonshire cream and awaits lemon curd, which is chilling. Cook Mary Lamb cuts crusts off white and wheat bread and makes dainty finger sandwiches.

Read dashes about, telling the chef to add vanilla to a recipe and directing DeBenedetti on which spatula to use.

In the dining area, guests chat contentedly and sip tea as Read introduces herself to each table.

"This is a training tea," she tells her first guests, "so some of it is not quite right."

And it's not. There are six tables, but Read prepares only four three-tiered serving trays.

One tier holds a plateful of meticulously arranged finger sandwiches. Another bears scones. On a third rests raspberry-pecan crumbles - which look like tiny tarts - and miniature chocolate eclairs.

"Do you have any of those tomato sandwiches left?" she asks Lamb. Before she replies, the chef walks by and Read asks him, "Did you add vanilla? Add a touch of vanilla."

It's 4:07 p.m. and Read realizes she needs to prepare two more three-tiers. The guests have been seated a good half-hour, with no food in sight.

Read rushes to prepare the remaining food, then steps back to have a look.

"These are not right," Read says

Though Read isn't satisfied with them - she is picky about presentation, and all the three-tiers just don't meet her standards - the servers take out the food anyway.

The din in the restaurant rises and falls as guests sip tea, bite into scones and chat. They're good-natured; this is a training tea, after all, and they are nonpaying guests and friends.

It's been a whirlwind, but it's over. The next time Read prepares food for guests, they'll be paying customers.

Hard facts

Businesses opening, closing and declaring bankruptcy in 2002, when Arizona ranked 27th based on the number of new businesses formed:

Businesses formations:

United States: 550,100

Arizona: 14,291

Terminations:

United States: 584,500

Arizona: 17,642

Bankruptcies:

United States: 38,155

Arizona: 756

Source: U.S. Small Business Administration

Sunday:

Making it happen

Tamara Read longs to own a tearoom. After years of planning, she's ready to take the plunge.

Today:

Pre-opening jitters

Vandals hit the Chantilly Tea Room and Gift Boutique and kitchen equipment fails. But a pre-opening tea is a success.

Tuesday:

Finally, opening day

The new tearoom is a hit, but holiday teas strain the staff - and owner Tamara Read's nerves.

Wednesday:

The joy - and pain - of success

Customers love the tearoom - but popularity comes with a price.

Contact reporter Tiffany Kjos at 806-7738 or tkjos@azstarnet.com.

Day three of a four-day series

The new tearoom is a hit, but holiday teas strain the staff — and owner Tamara Read's nerves.

*****

It's a sunny day in late September 2002 when Tamara Read opens the Chantilly Tea Room and Gift Boutique, a project that's been in her head for several years and under construction for several months.

She is determined to beat the odds, to avoid being one of the nearly 60 percent of small businesses that fail within their first four years.

Her first guests are dozens of "Red Hatters" - a group of mostly over-50 women who go on outings dressed in purple outfits and red hats.

As they file in, their attire a colorful complement to the Victorian decor, their comments fill the two-story mauve building.

"Look at the little lampshade with the feathers."

"This is what this town needs."

"This is really a tearoom. It really is."

One guest gives Read, dressed in a brown pantsuit with a teacup and teapot pin, her own pink hat - pink because at 33, tradition says Read is not not old enough to wear red.

Her parents, Bruce and Vicki Read, are on hand. State Sen. Toni Hellon shows up for the ribbon-cutting ceremony. But not all the Red Hatters, who have reservations, have arrived at the tearoom, 5185 N. Genematas Drive.

Read has waited more than 20 years for this day, ever since she fell in love with the idea of a tearoom when she had tea at New York's Plaza hotel.

She wants everything to be perfect.

"Some of the groups are late," she frets.

"We're going to do it whether they're late or not," says her father. Bruce Read, who owns a business management firm, is intensely involved in the operation, signing for a UPS delivery and later ringing a bell to usher guests and workers outside for an opening ceremony.

But the younger Read is the one in charge.

"Thank you so much for coming," she tells the assembled guests. "This is our first official duchess afternoon tea."

She named the tea after the seventh duchess of Bedford, who is said to have started the tradition of afternoon tea.

Finally, it's time. Read tells the servers to bring out the traditional three-tiered serving dishes filled with sweet and savory treats.

"Just keep them coming," she says.

A customer tells Read it would be nice if there were music. Read thanks her, choosing not to point out that the guests' loud chatter has obliterated the piped-in classical music.

Guests drink tea, eat scones and treats with gusto, chat animatedly - then seem to all want to leave at once. More than a dozen line up in the tearoom's gift shop to pay, creating a backlog at the register.

In the kitchen, Read compliments her staff before a second group of Red Hatters arrives.

"You guys did an amazing job of getting things out," she says, rubbing her temples.

"Tamara, your break is over with. You've got a number of women here," her father says as new guests arrive.

It's harried in the kitchen, but the jovial guests are enjoying themselves. Read retains her composure in the tearoom but shows her stress to staffers.

"A few minutes ago I was a grumpy owner," Read says. "The door wasn't shut and I said, ‘Shut the door!' "

She'll have to work on that.

Turning away business

Two and a half weeks later, Read has extended lunch to 3 p.m. and is overwhelmed by the number of people who want to dine, sit and soak up the tearoom's atmosphere.

She has to turn away walk-ins.

"We're pretty much booked every day, and that frustrates people," Read says.

She's working seven days a week from 6 a.m. to at least 8 p.m., cooking, serving, busing tables, placing orders for food, planning for the next day.

She is surprised how much she enjoys the management side of the business - ordering food, keeping inventory stocked, organizing.

Her dad comes in every day, and her mom, Vicki, helps out as often as her job allows. Chantilly already has regulars, and reservations are coming in for special holiday teas scheduled for three Saturdays in December.

The tearoom also is drawing children's parties, birthdays, groups of elderly ladies from assisted-living centers, and businesswomen taking their clients to lunch.

The pace is unrelenting. After two months, the tearoom has four servers - double the number Read expected to have. Complicating matters, Read is fighting the last vestiges of valley fever.

One day in November, the tearoom has its busiest day ever, serving 168 people - far more than the usual 90 or so.

"We were missing a server. It was crazy. And of course I was sick. I could barely stand up," she says. "I was having to make stuff that we ran out of, cooking things, monitoring things to make sure things were getting out, and I would go upstairs and lie down and was fighting a fever - I broke it that afternoon."

At the breaking point

Read strives to maintain a calm, cool dining area. The kitchen is another matter. It's small for having so many people - a dishwasher, kitchen assistants, cooks, the chef, Read - buzzing around. It gets hot.

During busy times, workers sometimes joke with one another, but they often toil almost in silence because they're working so hard to get food out quickly.

Almost everything is made from scratch, from scones to soups to curried turkey salad.

Many of the offerings can't be created ahead of time. The simplest recipe - strawberry fool, a topping for scones - takes about 45 minutes to make.

The fragile sandwiches quickly go stale if left out in the open air. So after they are carefully arranged on each three-tier platter, they're covered with a paper towel and spritzed with a water bottle to keep them moist.

There's lots of potential for disaster: What if the bread gets soggy? What if the cream refuses to whip? What if someone drops a teapot?

Only occasionally does the stress get the best of Read. At one holiday tea, the first sitting goes well. At the second sitting, though, the staff is less organized, and some three-tiers go out missing items such as a certain kind of sweet or sandwich.

"We have a menu," Read reprimands the staff. "These people are expecting certain things."

Later, employees grouse about the dressing-down, some saying they're just miffed enough to skip Read's holiday party. Meanwhile, Read sits in the back room, regretting what happened and worrying she's offended her father, whom she snapped at when he insisted on trying to accommodate a caller whose reservation had not been recorded in the book.

"Dad," Read says when he pokes his head in to ask a question. "I am so sorry I snapped at you."

Read has been a boss before, but never an owner, and there's a difference: Sometimes, she has no one to turn to but herself.

10 tips on small-business success

1. Find a niche. Concentrate on a fairly narrow market and stick to what you do best.

2. Be small, but think big. Take advantage of the inherent advantages of small businesses: flexibility, ability to respond quickly, opportunity for personalized service.

3. Differentiate your products. Study, but do not copy, your competitors, and package your products distinctly.

4. First impressions count. Strive for accuracy and quality the first time around with a well-laid-out store, a courteous staff and polite phone manners.

5. Build a good reputation. Be known for the quality of your products and support services.

6. Improve constantly. Rather than cling to "this is how we've always done it" thinking, realize that today's business environment demands new solutions - fast.

7. Listen and react to your customers. When you focus on your customers and gain their trust, they will recommend and remain loyal to you.

8. Plan for success. Going into business without a plan is like driving into a foreign land without a road map.

9. Be innovative. Use change as a springboard to improve your products, reputation or operations.

10. Work smart. Successful entrepreneurs embrace change and know how to manage their time, realizing the importance of leisure as well as work.

Source: PowerHomeBiz.com

Contact reporter Tiffany Kjos at 806-7738 or tkjos@azstarnet.com.

Day four of a four-day series

Customers love the tearoom — but popularity comes with a price.

*****

She's made it.

Tamara Read, who built Chantilly Tea Room and Gift Boutique from the ground up, has beaten the odds. She'll celebrate her business's first anniversary Saturday with a special "garden hat tea."

Read's venture is a clear success: She has expanded its hours and regularly has to turn away customers without reservations. Her tearoom, at 5185 N. Genematas Drive, is not going to be among the 25 percent of restaurants that fail in the first 12 months.

The year has changed Read, 33. She exhibited a newfound self-assuredness in late spring while proudly showing a guest the waterfall and flowers she says get far more care than her plants at home.

Her father, who has backed her on the venture since well before it opened, comes out to discuss an issue. She disagrees with him - and doesn't back down, as she might have several months ago.

She knows what she wants - and that might just be another tearoom. She's considering a second location, despite her father's advice not to consider such things until her first anniversary.

She has little time for mulling. Her days fly by at breakneck speed. Lunchtimes are brisk, and items in the gift shop sell so quickly that she barely has time to order new ones.

"If they drink the tea, they want to buy the tea. They want to buy the strainers," she says. "Everything I use, they want to buy."

Read expected to have five employees after her first six months. Instead, she has eight servers and a total of 22 employees.

She continues to refine procedures, but it's difficult because the tearoom is so busy.

"Every day it's just like an onslaught," she says. "The days that we're kind of quiet we get a little bit done, but not enough to make that much of a marked difference. But we're slowly, surely getting things done."

The ambience is not quite what Read was striving for during the lunch hour, when the building resonates with customers' voices.

And breakage is a bit of a problem. The tearoom uses pretty, fragile china cups and saucers Read collected for years before opening the business.

"I was crying about one. It was one of my favorites - blue, gorgeous," Read says. "The person who broke it was afraid to tell me."

Getting tough, speaking up

Read still works seven days a week. Although she runs a restaurant, she is wafer-thin and often forgets to eat - despite the small refrigerator and microwave near her office.

She and the staff have developed systems to stem the chaos. For example, the "now" system - as in, "Tamara, I have a question - now" - alerts Read that an employee needs her immediate attention.

"We have a smoother way of running things," says server Debra Burke, who has worked at the tearoom almost since the beginning.

"The holiday teas, those were intense."

The intensity is proof of the tearoom's success - and the very thing that weighs on Read and her busy staff.

"Some days you just sort of get overwhelmed," Read says. "There are so many pans boiling at the same time that you have to get one done before you can pop to another one. Or do them all at once."

Read has an easy rapport with staffers, but she's had to be tough.

A year ago, she spoke so softly that it was difficult to hear her. She has learned to speak up.

When kitchen staff couldn't agree which radio station to play, she took away the radio. Workers are allowed to listen to personal stereos with headphones until 11 a.m.

"Out of everything, it's the radio that causes conflict," Read says with wonder.

It's not the only conflict. A couple of weeks ago Read met with the tight-knit but occasionally gossipy staff to discuss the difference between venting and attacking.

"They're hard-working and they get along," she says. "Everyone has tiffs in families, but we work with everybody and we talk about them."

A typical Saturday

Earlier this month, as Chantilly's first anniversary approaches, Read spends a typical Saturday: She straightens her office and installs new shelves in the gift shop. She solves a problem, whips up a batch of scones and chats with customers.

First, she heads for the kitchen, where she tucks her hair into a green baseball cap and dons an apron. She confers with the chef about the scones she's about to make, then turns to the dishwasher: "OK - not so many suds - good. Good job."

Hostess Traci Grabb opens the swinging door that separates the tearoom from the kitchen and hands Read a cake for a special event.

Read skims a notebook full of recipes. Then she returns to the scones: "Am I using one egg or two?" she asks chef Amy Edelen.

She takes off her rings, washes her hands and mixes the ingredients by hand. After they're in the oven, she removes her apron and cap, and zips through the restaurant and gift shop, heading upstairs to her office.

"I'm just going to check on the cost of that," she tells the hostess about a gift item a customer is inquiring about.

Back downstairs - and back in her cap and apron - she refills a teapot and checks the temperature of individual quiches reheating in the oven.

"All right. Amy, they're hot enough. Let's take 'em out," she says, pulling the tray from the oven. Standing on end, it would be about half her height.

As cook Ellen Fenster applies a bandage and tape to a fresh burn, she and Read compare the scars they bear from pulling baking trays out of the hot oven.

A second location?

Despite the physical, mental and emotional cost of running the tearoom, Read still remembers why she got into the business - even though she has yet to draw a paycheck. It's something that's stuck with her since she had tea at the famed Plaza hotel in New York City as a little girl.

"It just caught me and I just fell in love with it," she says. "We have a lot of little girls who come here and I think, for them, it's the same thing."

The idea of that second location pops up again.

"In the back of your mind you're thinking, ‘OK, I can do another one.' Maybe on the other side of town," she says. "My dad and I smile at each other and we start laughing and say, ‘Don't even go there for a while.'"

Getting help

Small business startups face a variety of challenges, from funding to hiring to marketing, but they also have plenty of places to go for free or low-cost help. Here are a few:

Licensing information and access to statewide business assistance resources: Arizona Business Connection, 1-800-542-5684; free. www.commerce.state.az.us/SmallBus

Workshops and networking: Arizona Small Business Association, 327-0222; dues $125 per year. www.asba.com/busiservices.html

Loans: Business Development Finance Corp., 623-3377; www.bdfc.com

Counseling and workshops: Service Corps of Retired Executives, 670-5008; some free, some fee-based. www.scorearizona.org/tucson

Counseling, training and workshops: Small Business Development Center at Pima Community College, 206-6404; some free, some fee-based. www.cc.pima.edu/sbdc

Business planning courses, seminars and a microloan program: Microbusiness Advancement Center, 620-1241. Some fees, scholarships available.

Research: Tucson-Pima Public Library system, 791-4010; free. www.lib.ci.tucson.az.us/business/StartingBusiness.htm

For more resources, see www.azstarnet.com/smallbusiness/resourcelist.html

Contact reporter Tiffany Kjos at 806-7738 or tkjos@azstarnet.com.